Facebook can still track users through its “Like” function. And Web surfers’ online data can still be used by law enforcement and “market research” for the employment, credit, healthcare and insurance industries. And let’s not even get into denial of service attacks and cybersecurity…
That said, here are three major privacy issues that everyone should pay attention to in 2013:
1.Transparency
2.Data sharing
3.Dodgy QR codes
This week’s program has a somewhat cheerful essay talking about cultural balkanization as seen through the lens of mid-season television show cancellations. Notice was also given that there will likely be a special dropped into the feed without warning during the week as proceedings continue at the World Conference on International Telecommunications.
Related links:
Download here (MP3) (Ogg Vorbis), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net. Stephen’s Silly Summation of Christmas Wishes can be found here via Amazon, as always.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.
Who’s Tracking Your Reading Habits? An E-Book Buyer’s Guide to Privacy, 2012 Edition
See the chart here
The holiday shopping season is upon us, and once again e-book readers promise to be a very popular gift. Last year’s holiday season saw ownership of a dedicated e-reader device spike to nearly 1 in 5 Americans, and that number is poised to go even higher. But if you’re in the market for an e-reader this year, or for e-books to read on one that you already own, you might want to know who’s keeping an eye on your searching, shopping, and reading habits.
Unfortunately, unpacking the tracking and data-sharing practices of different e-reader platforms is far from simple. It can require reading through stacked license agreements and privacy policies for devices, software platforms, and e-book stores. That in turn can mean reading thousands of words of legalese before you read the first line of a new book.
With the fate of our beloved internet economy allegedly at stake, perhaps it’s a good time to examine what Do Not Track is. How did the standard come to be, what does it do, and how does it stand to change online advertising? Is it as innocuous as privacy advocates make it sound, or does it stand to jeopardize the free, ad-supported internet we’ve all come to rely on?
You might be interested in the new(ish) list where we talk about IT Security stuff, SEC4LIB. It’s low volume and you’ll probably learn a few things about security issues.
You may also like to check out the IT Security For Libraries section here at LISNews: https://lisnews.org/security
IT World has a nice write up on a new service called Priveazy [ https://www.priveazy.com/ ] that helps Netizens wade through the maze of privacy settings we are presented with on a daily basis.
Conclusions
Here are the researcher’s conclusions:
•The market has produced few realistic, privacy-protective alternatives to the dominant privacy-invasive online services.
•Greater transparency and consent requirements could help, but only if consumers can make decisions that align with their preferences.
•The gulf between private-sector information demands and consumer preferences suggest that better disclosures and choice mechanisms will only preserve the status quo.
•Aggressive interventions are necessary to create incentives for firms to reduce collection of personal information.
•Privacy tradeoffs are not clear; consumers need the ability to change their minds and walk away from a service.
Staying Off Facebook Won’t Protect Your Privacy
Stay away from social networks and people won’t know who you’re hanging out with or what you’re doing, right? Wrong. When it comes to social networking, a recent study suggests, you can run but you can’t hide.
A paper published last month in the journal PLoS One shows how researchers were able to learn about nonmembers of social networks based on information their friends posted online. Using machine-learning models, German researchers Emöke-Ágnes Horvát, Michael Hanselmann, Fred A. Hamprecht and Katharina A. Zweig were able to predict whether two nonmembers of a social network knew each other based on information shared by a mutual contact on the network.
This week’s episode talks about cookery. Yes, cookery. A news miscellany is also presented.
Direct Download Link: Ogg Vorbis Audio (Subscription Options)
Related links:
LISNews: Security4Lib – IT Security For Libraries
Ars Technica: What the airline industry can teach us about broadband caps
Ars Technica: Why bandwidth caps could be a threat to competition
CNN: Why one in five U.S. adults doesn’t use the Internet
Radio Survivor: As May 21 Anniversary Approaches, Family Radio Avoids End of World Talk
Wired: Be Very Afraid: The Cable-ization of Online Life Is Upon Us
LISTen: An LISNews.org Program — Episode #197 by The Air Staff of Erie Looking Productions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Security4Lib – IT Security For Libraries
Security4Lib is a Drupal based website, wiki and email list for the discussion of issues relating to IT Security in libraries, including, but not limited to, web sites, email, networks, servers, passwords, services, mobile, wifi, and apps.
Like all the other “4Lib” groups, this one is all about libraries, and those people who work in libraries.
What’s there:
There’s an email list: http://lists.security4lib.org/listinfo.cgi/security4lib-security4lib.org
There’s a Wiki: http://wiki.security4lib.org/
And there’s this Drupal powered website: http://security4lib.org/
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